SELNEC (plus Saddleworth), hoping that Andrew Teale will fill in the details a bit.
A good analysis; I may steal some of it for an English Elections post I'm planning on the Greater Manchester councils in the leadup to May.
Sadly I am no longer the Chancellor of the Duchy of Smithills: I am currently squatting in the Duchy of Radcliffe North while I endeavour to purchase my way into the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever.
The Tory wards are the ones you might expect - middle-class areas all except for Heaton, which is posh - million-pound homes off Chorley New Road and all that jazz. The Lib Dem collapse in Horwich appears to be mostly down to the retirement of the main campaigners a couple of years ago. Smithills has stayed in the Lib Dem column thanks to the usual brand of pavement and pothole politics; the local party spent a fair chunk of the ward's pothole repair fund one year resurfacing the road I used to live on. It's bizarre that Westhoughton is still competitve, but then Westhoughton is a bizarre place anyway.
The Labour control came on the toss of a coin after Ramsbottom ward was a tie in the 2011 election. The Lib Dem seats were all in Prestwich and specifically Holyrood ward, which has a similar demographic profile to the more middle-class parts of South Manchester but is cheaper than Didsbury; the yellow peril broke into the other Prestwich wards in the Brown years on the back of a successful campaign against the closure of Prestwich High School (which, incidentally, educated me). The 2012 Tory campaign was a disaster from start to finish, exemplified by the arrest of the former council leader and another senior Tory councillor on suspicion of corruption; no charges were ever brought, but by then the election was over. It says something about the 2012 Bury election that the Tories contrived to lose Tottington (a middle-class town in the hills above Bury and normally a Tory banker) while holding the more marginal seat of Pilkington Park (the posh and Jewish half of Whitefield).
The Independent Labour councillor left the party in protest at the council approving a planning application to build a football stadium for
the Judean People's FrontFC United of Manchester in his ward. He's not up for election until 2015. I can't see any other result than another redwash here.
Twas not always thus - when Labour ran the country the Tory seats in the council were in Chadderton, which isn't quite as bad as Oldham. Although comparing Chadderton with Oldham is a bit like the difference between getting killed by five lions and getting killed by six lions.
I doubt it has anything to do with Cyril Smith. First, the allegations against Smith had been going round the town for donkey's years (my dad was aware of them when he lived in Littleborough in the late 1970s); also, I'm fairly sure the Lib Dem group was already starting to fall apart before Smith died. I have no idea what's been going on in Rochdale, although unlike Manchester I do think it's possible that the Lib Dems could win a ward this time round.
Indeed. The Labour mayor isn't up until 2016 and not much is going to change here. Walkden South is the only ward that looks competitive.
It's worth noting that a lot of the Stockport wards are marginal, so things could change rather more quickly here than you might expect.
(yawns) Next.
If their performance in the Wythenshawe by-election is anything to go by, the local Tories could be in trouble. I have a feeling that there will be wailage and gnashage of Tory teeth here come 23rd May.
The Wigan Independent Conservatives and the Standish Independents are the same
familyparty. The remaining Tory seat, bizarrely, is in the Leigh constituency. This is one area where Labour stand to lose seats; they underperformed badly in Wigan in 2012.
